One of the Opposition’s key job creation policies is a National Insurance ‘holiday’ for new businesses; they claim that it would create tens of thousands of jobs. But we’ve been here before, last time there was a Conservative government, and it only managed to create just over 2,000 jobs. At last year’s Conservative conference George…
It is very hard to predict what tomorrow’s employment and unemployment figures will look like and very risky to pull out one month’s results and announce that we have either turned a corner or that things are worse than ever. These figures shift about a lot and there are plenty of ‘blips’ – odd months…
Yesterday’s figures capped was another month of mixed results. Once again, youth unemployment defied the pessimists and failed to pass the one million mark, the claimant count again showed signs of improvement, the number of people in employment rose and there was a tiny increase in vacancies. Other figures still look gloomy, especially for long-term…
David Cameron’s Hugo Young Lecture is the closest any Conservative has come to explaining how they expect reactionary methods to achieve progressive ends. He fails, but the speech should not be written off and it shows that he has – at least rhetorically – broken with the Conservatives of the 1980s and 90s, who didn’t…
Read the TUC Recession Report for September 2009 We publish this month’s Recession Report today, and the special feature is a look at what has happened to the relative value of benefits for unemployed people over the past 30 years. Today, Jobseeker’s Allowance for a single person is worth just 10% of average earnings; this…
In the opening months of the recession, the public sector was relatively sheltered from job losses and this was frequently highlighted by right-wing newspapers calling for cuts: ‘sharing the pain’ was a common theme. If that is what they wanted, they must be very pleased with the turn events have been taking. The University and…
There are five and a half million people who want work and either haven’t got a job or can’t work as many hours as they would like. Last month I promised to keep a record of the “want work” figures each month. The unemployment figures are very important, but they don’t tell us the whole…
Today’s labour market statistics show unemployment reaching 2.47 million – two and a half million next month seems inevitable, with the figure climbing about 35,000 each month. Unemployment has now risen for 14 consecutive months. The figures for men and for 18 – 24 year olds have not fallen since December 2007, women’s unemployment is…
This recession has encouraged some half-witted arguments, but one of the worst is the notion that, because young people are facing the worst prospects of any age group (undoubtedly true), therefore older workers should ‘stand aside’ to ‘make room’ for them (complete b*!!*<#s). There may be an obvious reason why I am more aware of…
It is good to see that the Government is moving to improve the guarantee of jobs for long-term unemployed young people. The Future Jobs Fund has already supported the creation of 47,000 new jobs, and the announcement of extra places (including apprenticeships) in retail and other industries is excellent news. This approach should be adopted…